Because when shit goes bad, it gets hard to move money. Your liquid assets are frozen. You have to change countries, move your family, change names, in order to avoid reprisal and extradition. Your contacts, excluding a few equally scummy people you trust (because they're as deep in the dirt as you are) are all gone. Your new name means nothing. You won't totally start over (you have a few scumbag contacts who can get your kids into top MBA schools, and you'll be able to buy a resume in time) but it will be a while before you can work again.
You'll need to buy a resume and references, for your new identity, in order to get an upper-middle-class management job, but that is much harder than it might seem when you're on the run from the law and possibly being hunted internationally (by vigilante bounty hunters if not governments). The buying-a-resume takes 3 years and in the mean time, you'll have living expenses. How do you get money to cover those? Your old-country money est perdu. Rental income from a couple buildings you "just happened to have" might float you, but for short-term needs you'll want to borrow against your house. One house (two would draw attention). Best if that house is "worth" $1.5 million. You can borrow a lot more against that than against a $400k L.A. bungalow.
Owning $1.5-10 million of real estate doesn't stick out as much in an area that is already horribly expensive.
Best if that house is "worth" $1.5 million. You can borrow a lot more against that than against a $400k L.A. bungalow.
Your understanding of LA-area real-estate -- and its appeal to Chinese buyers -- appears to be...incomplete:
"Wealthy Chinese home buyers boost suburban L.A. housing markets" [1]
"Housing crisis hasn't touched San Marino" [2]
In San Marino -- a former WASP bastion, now about 50% Chinese -- $2 - $10 million homes are readily found [3].
(And there are other, cheaper cities with large Chinese populations close by, so one can pick one's price-point).
In the city itself, in or near West LA for example, the market has been hot for a while -- it's not hard to find areas with median house prices over $1 million (e.g. [4]) -- a $1.5 million house would not be hard to find.
Or, for (much) more expensive places, one could go to Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Rolling Hills, Malibu, etc. [5].
So, your putative fugitive would have little problem finding an expensive house -- for most of values of "expensive" -- in the greater LA area, either in a Chinese enclave or, if they needed to stay away from people who might recognize them, etc., in other nice areas.
You'll need to buy a resume and references, for your new identity, in order to get an upper-middle-class management job, but that is much harder than it might seem when you're on the run from the law and possibly being hunted internationally (by vigilante bounty hunters if not governments). The buying-a-resume takes 3 years and in the mean time, you'll have living expenses. How do you get money to cover those? Your old-country money est perdu. Rental income from a couple buildings you "just happened to have" might float you, but for short-term needs you'll want to borrow against your house. One house (two would draw attention). Best if that house is "worth" $1.5 million. You can borrow a lot more against that than against a $400k L.A. bungalow.
Owning $1.5-10 million of real estate doesn't stick out as much in an area that is already horribly expensive.